Europe in Winter (The Fractured Europe Sequence)(52)

She came to a decision, opened the door as far as the chain would let it go, and said, “Yes?”

The little man beamed at her. “Hello,” he said in English; English English – he had quite a posh accent. “I’m Bradley.”

She looked him up and down. She hadn’t been able to see it through the door viewer, but there was a bulging canvas carryall on the floor by his feet. “Yes?”

“There’s a small café in Budapest owned by a defrocked Church of England bishop,” Bradley said conversationally.

“I hear their coffee’s terrible,” she answered.

Bradley nodded happily. “Could I...?” he said.

“Sure.” She closed the door, unlatched the chain, opened the door again. “Come on in.”

He picked up the bag and stepped into the room, and Carey closed the door and stood with her back to it. “You’d better be the real thing, sunshine,” she told him. “Otherwise I’m going to completely spoil your day.”

Bradley was looking around the room with a faint air of disappointment. He grinned at her and put the bag down by the bed and the flowers on the desk. He took out his phone, thumbed up an app, and started to walk around with it held out in front of him like a charm against some vague and not very awful evil.

“Did you sleep well?” he asked distinctly, all the while keeping an eye on the screen of the phone.

Carey shrugged. “I slept.”

“Good, good.” Bradley ran the phone along the edge of the desk, crouched down and waved it underneath. “I thought we might take a turn around the Basilica later. It’s the biggest church in Hungary, you know.”

“I didn’t know that.” She had no intention of going anywhere in daylight.

Bradley was over by the windows now, holding the phone up high and pointing it at the curtain rod. He looked at the screen, seemed to ponder for a few moments, then held it up and started to move again.

“The Primatial Basilica of the Blessed Virgin Mary Assumed into Heaven and Saint Adalbert,” he said in an amused voice. “And if you think that’s a mouthful you should hear it in Hungarian.” He headed across the room, opened the bathroom door, looked inside.

Carey followed, unwilling to let the Englishman out of her sight. He was pointing the phone at the mirror over the sink, the light fitting, the little waste bin, the lavatory, the shower head. He looked at the screen of the phone, nodded to himself, turned it off, and pocketed it. Then he turned on the shower and the taps, closed the lid of the toilet, and sat.

“How are you?” he asked genially, in a voice she could barely hear over the sound of running water.

“I’ve been better,” she said. “Do you know what happened?”

He shook his head. “Not yet, and that’s not important at the moment. Could you give me a quick rundown of what’s been going on since you arrived in Hungary, please. Just the bullet points; I’ll tell you if I need more detail.”

Carey went through the Situation and its aftermath, as she understood them. Bradley stopped her a couple of times and asked her to expand on something. It took her almost an hour.

“Could I see the phone this ‘Laura’ gave you, please?” he asked when she’d finished.

“Sure.” The phone had fallen out of her pocket while she slept, and it was on the floor by the bed. She retrieved it and took it back into the bathroom, where Bradley turned it over in his hands. “She said she was a stringer,” she told him.

“Hungary’s a strange old place,” he said, taking out his own phone and scanning hers. “There are Coureurs here, but they’re a bit of a law unto themselves. I’ve never met any of them. You said she was English.”

“She sounded English.”

He nodded and swiped through the phone’s screens and menus. “Well,” he said, handing it back, “it seems kosher. You should dispose of it, though.”

“There’s still two and a half thousand Swiss francs on here,” she told him.

“Someone’s emergency operational funds,” he said. “Actually, now I think, let me have it. I’ll see they get it back.”

Carey gave the phone back and he dropped it in a pocket of his jacket and stood up. “I’m going to have a coffee, I think,” he said. “There are clothes and things in the bag. Get yourself cleaned up and changed and I’ll be back in, oh, say forty minutes and we’ll take it from there. Okay?”

It occurred to Carey that she had not seen Bradley stop smiling once since she had looked at him through the door viewer. “How are you going to get me out of here?” she asked.

“You let me take care of that,” he said, going to the door. “Lock up behind me, and I’ll see you in a little while.” And with that he was gone.

She unzipped the bag and looked inside. A couple of pairs of jeans, some underwear, skirts, T-shirt, blouses, a warm jacket, sensible shoes, two fleeces, cosmetics, a tube of hair dye, a disposable battery-powered haircutting comb, and three pairs of spectacles with plain lenses. The clothes were all obviously bought by a man, but it was interesting that they were the right sizes.





WHILE THE AMERICAN woman got ready, Bradley went along the street to a rather disreputable café. He bought an Americano and a small glass of brandy and took them both to a booth near the back. He made a couple of phone calls, then he took the phone the American had given him out of his pocket and looked it over. He scanned it again with his phone, went through its menus and settings. There were no numbers in its contacts folder, nor in its call history. He sat for a few moments, considering.